Tuesday, September 13, 2016

From ‘Meeting Mr Kim. Or how I went to Korea and learned to love Kimchi’ by Jennifer Barclay

‘When have I not been
weary in winter time, or indeed anywhere when settled?’

-Edward Lear

South Korea, or the Republic of Korea, the ROK, has a
population of forty-five million – close to that of England, though the
landmass is smaller, nearer the size of Portugal.

Kim Il-sung, ……shaped North Korea over an astonishing
forty-eight-year reign…..Kim Jong-il inherited the state just as all first sons
inherit their father’s business in Korean culture.

….within Korea there has been hardly any intermarriage with
other nationalities and the gene pool has essentially remained Korean.

Taxis were reasonably cheap, though spirits could be
dampened by the mad traffic jams…….

Home to nearly eleven million people, Seoul has almost a
quarter of the entire population of South Korea. Smog and dust hang in the air,
amid grids of utilitarian commercial office blocks.

It was quite unusual to see fat people in Seoul. Some of the
young women were extremely thin, but even older women tended to stay trim, as
did the men.

….Korean culture had many rules of etiquette; discipline and
obedience were revered; breaking the rules just wasn’t done. Rice dishes in
Korea are eaten with a spoon, and that’s that. Chopsticks are for side dishes
and noodles.

When I lived in Athens, an evening stroll around town would
generally yield a few smiles, bizarre conversations, the occasional invitation
to join in someone’s party, some little epiphany of Greek life. Whenever I felt
lonely and down there, I’d just go for a walk and see what cropped up……..But
making contact wasn’t easy in Seoul. I could wander around for hours and smile
at strangers, but most people seemed not to notice me. In a world where nobody
says hello, life can be pretty dull.

……Gav had the proverbial Irish gift of the gab……

…….Beer Restaurant ……The floor was strewn with food and
cigarette butts and paper napkins. It reminded me a bit of a tapas bar in
Spain. And yet not quite, because – ah yes, there you go – people don’t spit on
the floor quite as much in Spain.

Seoul was impersonal, like all big cities……..

He told me Koreans were scared of foreigners because most
Koreans didn’t speak English, and therefore didn’t know how to communicate.

People in Seoul took great pride in their appearance – even if
the effect was unusual. Lots of young Korean men liked to dye their hair bright
primary colours.

There was nothing ostentatious about these buildings, though
they were lovingly decorated and cared for. Korean Buddhism teaches that we are
all part of nature, and its buildings try to blend into their natural
surroundings. They were quite different to the huge and imperialistic Buddhist
temples I would later see in Japan, or those in China or Thailand with their
gold roofs. Respect for nature, and oneness with it, is intrinsic to Korean
Buddhism. Harmony with nature and simple, restrained elegance are Korean
ideals.

The monks appeared happy. As I would read later, an
important element of Korean Buddhism is that you cant cling to happiness or
sadness; you walk peacefully and freely towards enlightenment. Everything that happens
teaches you something and you move forward, whatever is happening. The only way
to be satisfied in life is to learn your true nature.

Kyungju…there was a rather fetid international hostel…..I
opted…..for …….the Green House, with the usual selection of violent and
pornographic videos by the staircase.

Travel in Korea has not always been safe. The first European
to write about a sojourn in Korea was Dutchman Hendrik ……..Hamel, who arrived
in August 1653 when he was shipwrecked……Once on Korean soil, he found it very
difficult to leave: he and his shipmates were held captive for thirteen years. The
king in Seoul simply said ‘it was not his policy to send foreigners away from
his land’ …….because he did not want his country to become known to other
nations…….. Korea kept to himself, barely aware of the outside world. During those
years, Korea was repeatedly attacked and invaded by its more aggressive
neighbours, Japan and Manchuria. The country had recovered, but developed an
understandable fear of other nations, and simply closed its doors. …….Hendrik
Hamel’s account of Korea from 1653 to 1666 includes a section on marital law
stating that ‘the Koreans treat their women as slaves’. Men then could have as
many wives as they could maintain and visit prostitutes too……..Confucianism
ranked the male above the female and created an oppressive social environment
for women……….women existed to serve men and give birth. The only powerful women
were mothers-in-law, who were allowed to treat their son’s wives as slaves. ……..Henry
Savage Landor….wrote of his months in Korea in the 1890s…described the ‘very
strange custom’ that accorded women the right to walk about the streets of
Seoul during the ‘woman’s hour’ after sunset, during which time men were
confined indoors but tigers and leopards were on the prowl:…….Isabella Bird,
another English writer and traveler…. attested that ‘Korean women are very
rigidly secluded, perhaps more absolutely so than the women of any other nation’
………Not even the royal doctor could set eyes on the queen, while women of lower
status were granted much more freedom. ……So much changed for women in only a
hundred years! ……The women I had met generally seemed friendly and confident.

In The Red Queen, Margaret Drabble’s novel set in Korea, a
character says ‘one of the principal weaknesses of our Confucian system was
that it made no place for the spirit’. That’s where Buddhism was needed to
create balance and harmony.

Its surprising how many South Koreans cant swim, when the
country is almost surrounded by water. For most of the teenagers, the beach was
about eating and taking photos.

Korea seems a good place to be old: a time for playing chess
in the park, dancing, picnicking, always in company. Its firmly embedded in
Korean culture that you must look after your elders ……..

…..Koreans always looked so young to me.

………he wished me happy memories of Korea, and left. I walked
up the hill, smiling.

The president recently asked people to be especially nice to
visitors in the lead-up to Visit Korea Year. Was it because for so long nobody
left Korea with happy memories, and so few people come here to acquire them?

In the late sixteenth century there came the invasions from
Japan led by Hideyoshi and his samurai army. Recovering from this, Korea once
again accepted the dominance of China and agreed to pay it a tribute. Korea
clung to China and entered its most pronounced period of deliberate
isolationism, learning of the world only through China’s contact with it. Korea
cut itself off from all other external contact; the Hermit Kingdom did not
welcome visiting ships. The royal family of eighteenth-century Choson isolated
themselves in the refined palaces of Seoul, rarely leaving the confines of its
walls. Respectable upper-class women were supposed to remain indoors.

Koreans only take five days holiday a year, he said, all at
the same time.

……..unless you were a monk, Koreans saw it as a sad thing to
be alone, honja. To be happy, you
must have company. That’s why food was best when you shared it, all eating from
the same dish in the middle of the table. That’s why people liked travelling in
groups. I found the same thing when I lived in Greece, where my friends would
always like to do things with company; in Syntagma Square one day, an older
woman ignored every other empty bench in the square and sat right up next to
me.

In a Korean family, the wife is in charge of the home.

The discipline, obedience, orderliness and etiquette of
Confucianism was more than balanced by the Korean people’s natural exuberance,
their love of life and their country, and the unstoppable generosity and
hospitality of the Buddhist spirit. They were a tight-knit family, but not
unwilling to draw you in and make you a friend.

Drinking has been part of the social fabric of Korean life
for a long time. It provided Koreans with an escape from the rather stiff
constraints of their hierarchical Confucian culture. …….The only way to seal a friendship
or business association is to drink together.

Almost a quarter of Koreans are Christians. Christianity
entered Korea through Jesuits from the Chinese imperial court in the eighteenth
century, and spread quickly but was suppressed by the royal family.

……Catholic and Protestant denominations thrive alongside
Buddhism and Shamanism, and of course Confucianism, which is not quite a
religion but certainly a moral framework.

The hostel had a social lounge where you could meet other travelers,
and the porn videos and circular waterbeds so prevalent in Korean yogwan were conspicuously absent here.

Japan was sophisticated and lovely. The people were polite
and helpful. And yet, after a while, perhaps we missed the madness of Korea,
the effusiveness of the people, the unfathomable differences, the
rough-around-edges quality ……..merely being in Japan was astoundingly
expensive, twice as expensive as Korea.

……mountains covered seventy per cent of Korea’s land area,
making it one of the most mountainous regions in the world…

Unfortunately, while Korean people are hospitable, warm and good-humoured,
most foreigners tend to encounter the stony face of Seoul. Its not very
welcoming being laughed at in restaurants or told to leave, not easy getting
around when taxi drivers are short tempered…..on getting out of Seoul, you begin
to understand why Koreans are so proud of their country.

Korean culture must be one of the least diluted in the
world, especially for such an advanced nation. ……..Elizabeth Kim…….says ‘the
intense love for the country’s heritage and traditions has its darker side of
hatred for anything that taints the purity of that heritage’……..Yet the Korean
people have never sought domination over another nation. Perhaps its because
there is spirituality at the heart of the culture: Seon masters who live in
simple poverty, meditating in silence, living in harmony with nature. While Koreans
strive for economic growth, they have a place in their hearts for the simple
life away from the city and material things. They’re also a people who have massacred
and repressed their own, who litter their beaches and build ugly beaches, of
course. Its hard to generalize.

China is beginning to envy South Korea not only for its pop
stars but for the marriage of individual happiness and sophisticated
consumerism with Confucian values about family loyalty, something China lost
during the Cultural Revolution. South Korea has modernized and yet retained its
traditions.